super nothing: a response by adanya gilmore
Image captured by Maria Baranova, Courtesy of New York Live Arts
Super Nothing
Performed on March 28-30, 2025 at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Choreographer: Miguel Gutierrez
Dancers: Wendell Gray II, Jay Carlon, Justin Faircloth, & Evelyn Lilian Sanchez Narvaez
Composer: Rosana Cabán
Lighting Designer: Carolina Ortiz Herrera
Costume Designer: Jeremy Wood
Production Stage Manager: Evan Hausthor
Manager: Michelle Fletcher
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Empires collapse suddenly, but they die in a slow, bleeding out kind of death.
The four dancers in Super Nothing (2025) communicated a kind of arduous process. It builds and it dissipates, like an exasperated sigh.
It takes time to make dances, as it takes time for something built to last and endure and seep into architecture and institutions. Miguel Gutierrez, who is warm and generous in sharing insight into the scaffolding that took place, made something lasting and durational. The piece was like a container of progression and regression, one that made similarities to what I see people going through every day. There is a section in the middle called “the working material” that took eight months to get it to where it was on stage. Gutierrez is usually in his own work, but decided not to perform in super nothing meaning all that time he was using his brain differently– having to understand the structure, not as a performer, but solely as the choreographer. The skill of being able to communicate with the body so intricately is an incredible gift, one that should be funded and more widely recognized as one, not just in Gutierrez, but by all the dancemakers who give that to us.
Image captured by Jeremy Lawson, Courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
The dancers: Jay Carlon, Evelyn Lilian Sanchez Narvaez, Justin Faircloth, and Wendell Gray II show the audience how to show up. They show us in many ways what it looks like to sit in confusion and discomfort with someone for a long time. They brought out the tenderness in each other when there was frustration. They gassed each other up and brought each other out of different waves of passion, grief, and hopelessness. I was reminded of the sharp, harsh reminders in everyday life through their bodies’ generosity and vulnerability. I related to their ability to tap in and out of what was silly and sexy and funny. I was moved by their depiction of what it’s like to maintain presence as a community member and uplift others in a way that is impressively embodied and performed.
In recent months, the social landscape of my home country and more largely, Planet Earth has me in a perpetual state of what feels like despair, and then deeper despair again, and then fear and more despair. It’s funny because these concepts may not be something you would think could be performed so perfectly and gracefully before your eyes, but movement has that unique ability. Dance pulls me out of the swirling anxiety and degradation. Amidst cruelty and destruction of the innocent and sacred, dance reminds me that I am normal, and I do, in fact, need to dance, because it has a purpose for the world. I need to do it with other people. My idiosyncrasies are my strengths, and it is part of why I belong in the world with everyone else.
As the National Endowment for the Arts cuts funding to the arts, experimental dance in Chicago and widely in the U.S. is being defunded and threatened. These are not the only actions by the government that lead me to believe that the people who have recently risen to power would be happier if I were dead. In a way, I felt Gutierrez was communicating that feeling to his audience and then telling us in a way, “us still existing together is kind of cunty.”
I left Super Nothing thinking about how learning to be a dancer prepared me for being there for other people. Growing up going to rehearsals and sitting through tech runs, hours of running dances, then taking care of my body for the next day made me a person who can show up and be in my body when I really do not want to. I became someone who can rebound, bounce back, get back up stronger, observe, be patient, someone who can hold the weight of another person when they need me to. I can provide the strength of my body for what is necessary.
I was thrown by their commitment and way of showing to each other the work at hand and what felt like a feat of exactitude. They gave all of themselves to each other, effortfully delivering a vision of possibility.
I was reminded again what brings out my love for being all in something with people, and why I chose the path I chose. I’m reminded why I love dance and why I love to watch dance.
When the revolution comes I hope dancers will be there, because I know we are needed.
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Adanya Gilmore is a teacher, writer and movement artist born in Washington DC and currently living in Chicago. Drawing from multiple intersections of histories and experiences she investigates different forms of divergence from the perspective of being a Black femme. She recently graduated with an MFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she met incredible people, performed in cool dances and learned how to teach. They have worked with artists such as Jennifer Monson, Tere O'Connor, Dr. Cynthia Oliver, Gina T'ai, Christine Johnson, Ching-i Chang and jess pretty. Her writing has been published by the Chicago publication Sixty Inches From Center and the Humanities Research Institute at UIUC.
